Design philosophy for nanoelectronic systems, from SETs to neural nets

Abstract

This paper describes an overall policy for the design of nanoelectronic systems, showing how specific properties of quantum devices can be exploited instead of being counteracted, by introducing unconventional design approaches. Single‐electron tunnelling (SET) circuit ideas, as components for neural networks, are described in more detail. It is argued that the orthodox theory of single‐electron devices is not appropriate for circuit design and simulation, and needs reconsideration. An overview of SET circuit designs for neural nodes is given. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Synchronization of coupled single-electron circuits based on nanoparticles and tunneling junctions

“…[7][8][9] These devices could form the basis of a new generation of processing information systems, although severe fabrication challenges have made practical implementations difficult. The experimental characterization and modeling of particular systems are receiving much attention at the elementary device level.…”

“…However, it is also necessary to design general schemes that could perform information storage and processing tasks using well-defined nanostructures at the ideal circuit level. 7,8,[10][11][12] We have recently proposed a device that uses nanoscale switches to implement a signal processing scheme and a frequency-dependent associative memory. 13 In this article, we explore theoretically the synchronization of coupled single-electron circuits whose building blocks are nanoparticles interconnected with tunneling junctions.…”

“…[14][15][16][17] The tunnel junction acts as a leaky capacitor that can be controlled by the voltage across the junction and, because of the scale at which transport occurs, the transference of a few electrons may suffice to implement a variety of electronic functions. 8 Electron tunneling is influenced by the discrete nature of charge transport and the Coulomb blockade energy barrier ͑this energy must be higher than the thermal energy for the transport of single electrons to be controlled͒. This condition is usually fulfilled by scaling down to molecular dimensions.…”

Pattern Recognition Based on Auto-Associative Single-Electron Neural Network

“…The tunnelling of single-electron devices is possible if the Coulomb charging energy E c of the circuit is greater than the energy for thermal fluctuations existing at a given temperature, 12 which is seen in Eq. (3).…”

Bio-Inspired Stochastic Neural Networks for Nanoelectronics

“…For future electronics, nanoelectronics might be a breakthrough [4]. Generally, the use of nanoelectronics is motivated by several arguments [23,15] such as: basic devices cao be very small, nanoelectronics bas the potency to operate with very low supply power, and quantum properties thai appear at nanometer scale in principle represent an increase in signal-processing power.…”